Of Dust and Nanites
by Valantha
Summary: Rachel loved Thárros with all of her heart – no, more – he was her best and truest friend, and so much more. But sometimes it really stunk to wear her heart on her sleeve – or more literally, carry her soul around on her shoulder in the form of a European Magpie. Dæmon-AU
1. Gilded Cage

- Author's Note: I don't own the characters or Revolution; I'm just playing with them for a bit for fun, not profit.

Trigger warning: Non Consensual dæmon touching

* * *

Rachel lay still, flat on her back, staring at the faintly illuminated ceiling of her gilded cage. Early spring rain was thrumming at the roof above and she was pleasantly warm beneath the quilt and blankets. She could almost let herself sleep if it wasn't for the throbbing of her right wrist, the fear – no, knowledge – that Bass might come bursting in at any point to continue their little 'chat' or, worse yet, chat like they were still friends. But truly, Rachel had become adroit at ignoring physical pain, and constant uncertainty and trepidation regarding what Monroe might do was her new normal. What was really filling her stomach with an ever-expanding black hole of turmoil was the empty void between her shoulder and her neck where Thárros ought to be sleeping.

Thárros. Just thinking about him accelerated the black hole's rate of expansion. Yesterday – or was in two days ago now? Was it tomorrow yet? – Bass had gotten frustrated with her scripted non-answers and had plucked Thárros off of her shoulder. Rachel had been so shocked by the dry-ice-on-the-nethers-burn of violation that Sargent Strausser – and his creepy-ass ginger tomcat dæmon – had arrived with a birdcage and Monroe had stuffed Thárros into it, before she could master her quivering rage and quell her involuntary heaving.

Strausser left, bearing away the cage with a mantled and outraged Thárros, and Rachel rushed the door after him. Bass caught her, and wrenched her wrist, holding her in the room, but allowing her to watch her glossy black-and-white Magpie dæmon be carried into Monroe's office by the sinister Sargent. She caught one last glance at his tail feathers glinting violet and cobalt before Monroe slammed her bodily against the wall. Rachel turned away, unwilling to meet Monroe's eye when she saw Renny, his collie dæmon. Renny just lay in the corner licking her paws unperturbed. That was when it truly hit her how _royally _screwed she was. Rachel swallowed a mouthful of bile.

Renny – Renhet – used to be so cheerful and social, greeting everyone's dæmon with a wag and an inquiring nose, and now she was completely unfazed by Monroe grabbing Thárros and violating the tenets of every major religion, the Geneva Convention, _and_ the UN Commission on Human Rights. Rachel had known Monroe was no longer Bass, but seeing how different Renny was, combined with the low urgent pull at her navel telling her Thárros was too far away, and the wiry, hateful form of Monroe pressing into her, it was all too clear. Rachel executed emergency coping strategy number two, and shut down, withdrew, disengaged from the world.

After a bit of mostly-blocked-out mustache twirling, Monroe grew bored, and left. Once he was gone, Rachel permitted herself to slide down the wall and crush her legs to her chest. Eventually, she crab-walked over to the corner nearest Monroe's office – nearest Thárros – and felt the _physical_ tension alleviate somewhat. She strained the metaphysical bond between them to try to see what he could see – some people had that sort of bond with their dæmons – but all she could sense was the same amalgam of rage, fear, and disbelief she felt.

Rachel stayed in that corner, watching the patches of sunlight creep eastward, mind a numb swarm of half-suppressed emotions, until she felt it again, the the the frigid profanation of someone touching her dæmon – her soul – in cruel apathy, without her consent. The scaldingly-cold squirmies lasted less than a minute, but Thárros' shivering dread and indignation lasted far longer.

Rachel wished she could hold him to her breast, stroke his silky white scapulars and murmur that everything was going to be all right. But she couldn't. Couldn't hold him. Couldn't lie to him. Had had to stay here, bearing the burden, the expiation for her crimes against humanity. Had had to stay here to play the wounded bird and keep Monroe and Miles' attention away from Danny, Charlie, and Ben. But she hadn't counted on Miles' desertion, or Bass' insanity, and now Thárros had to bear the brunt of her miscalculations and misdeeds.

When a militiaman came in, beagle trotting at his side, bearing a plate of mutton and limp root vegetables, Rachel had coerced herself to stand up, walk away from Thárros and force down as much of the meal as she could stomach. Which wasn't much. When the militiaman returned and took her plate and dulled silverware, she absentmindedly wondered, not for the first time, who was going to eat her leavings or if it was going to go into a hog's slops bucket?

That first night, she had strained and just managed to walk to the bedroom to grab the bedding before hurrying back to the corner. She wasn't huddling there now because, for one, sleeping in that corner gave her such a crick in the neck, two, the breakfast-delivery militiaman's disdain at finding her in the corner still chafed, and three, like all pain, one could become _accustomed_ to the pain of separation.

Accustomed was just such a misleading word, even in her own mind. As if one could so quickly become acclimatized to missing their arm or leg. Earlier today – or was it yesterday? – she had flipped through one of the botany texts Bass had given her (emergency coping strategy number five) and had turned to murmur a marginally witty remark to Thárros, only to have the full brunt of his absence rammed her full on in the stomach. Luckily, no one – especially Monroe – was around to see her crumple into the pages of the book and smear the printed word with restrained tears. Without Thárros she truly was alone here. Friendless. Without a feathered breast to cry discreetly into or a silky shoulder to stroke meditatively. A constant void where her soul should be, perched on her shoulder, preening her hair, murmuring quips.

Rachel lay still, flat on her back, staring at the ceiling of her gilded cage, knowing Thárros was in a far more literal cage, just as friendless and alone. There was only one thing she could do to protect him, and that was to not let Monroe know how much the nigh absolute zero fingers probing her spleen affected her. She needed to be the cold bitch Bass painted her – emergency coping strategy number seven – to protect Thárros, to protect her soul.

* * *

- Author's Note: Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated :)


	2. College Memories, Fall 2001

- Author's Note: I don't own the characters or Revolution; I'm just playing with them for a bit for fun, not profit.

* * *

Rachel remembered the first time she saw Ben Matheson and Śānti – saw, not met, she didn't _meet_ them until a couple months later at a very ill-advised house-party – he was in front of her Physics 217 study section, looking every bit a scientist. Floppy brown hair, keen blue eyes, rumpled Oxford shirt, incongruous high-tops, and solemn little capuchin at his side.

At the time she was still self-conscious and defensive of Thárros' settled form. Everyone is allowed_ some_ stupidity at 17. She had noted the preponderance of primate-dæmons in her classmates, and some corvids – monkeys were the archetypal "good scientist" dæmon and ravens were the archetypal "evil scientist" dæmon. Her younger self would have been okay, had Thárros pegged her as a clever, pragmatic, and possibly villainous scientist, but most people mistook his sleek, glossy black-and-white form for some empty-headed song bird!

Rachel couldn't begin to count all the times she had be mistaken for some communications major bimbo, only at college for an MRS. _Or_ the number of times she had been told – in earnest astonishment – that she was "too pretty to be a physics major," like there was an inverse correlation between intelligence and beauty, academic interest and physical symmetry!

Ben had introduced himself to the class and then awkwardly dove into the first problem set – a remedial section on units, conversions, and significant figures. Rachel had used the time to scope out the other students in the study session. Besides the expected primates and corvids, there were a few canines – not too common in the sciences, but canines _were_ the most common, and least limiting, of the dæmons. There was one curious meerkat, one calm owl, two clever foxes, and one very out-of-place otter. Rachel had felt sorry for that young man. People had very strong opinions about otter-dæmons. Sure they were intelligent and creative, but they were also flighty as hell, playful and social adventure seekers. They made great travel journalists, performers, and party planners, but she hadn't thought he'd make it in sciences.

Then again, she should know better than to overly prejudge a person by their dæmon. David and Sasha did turn out to be as social and intelligent as the stereotype – it was his post-midterm house-party where Rachel first got to know Ben – but Sasha was a Brazilian river otter and David was far more focused and independent than pigeonholed.

As a TA Ben had been orderly, dependable, and rational. He was clearly smart, but was bewildered when Rachel would solve a problem at the board in a manner completely foreign to the procedure he had used to solve the sample problems. Rachel gave him brownie points for quickly catching up and following along – a much better response than that of any of her high school teachers she had pulled that trick on, who generally got flustered and told her she was wrong – and she pretty quickly took pity on him and stopped rocking the boat, enjoying the intellectual stimulation of college life.

* * *

Rachel was studying the social dynamics of the house party when she was tapped on the shoulder. Sure she had attended one college party at the beginning of the year, but that one had been well-chaperoned, and sure she had done lots of partying in high school, but this was different. Most dæmons had abandoned their people and clustered into clumps of similarities. The people were mingling more between clades, but even without the telltale indicators of the dæmons, the physicists and David's roommates' friends didn't intermingle much.

"Rachel Porter?" Rachel turned around, she had been watching Thárros socialize with the other corvids while nursing a pretty disgusting beer; it was Ben Matheson, the TA. Rachel hadn't realized he'd been invited to the party.

"Ben Matheson," she replied evenly.

"European Magpie: one of the few birds to use tools, and only the bird to exhibit mirror self-recognition," Ben declared definitively while nodding in the direction of the corvid-cluster.

Rachel was quite gratified he recognized Thárros for what he was, but also amused by Ben's idea of party conversation, and returned in kind, "Capuchin monkey: intermediate reaction to the mirror-test, frequent tool usage."

Ben ran his fingers through his messy mop of hair, and said, "So, um, what did you think of the midterm."

Rachel suppressed a smile at his utter adorkableness, and said, "I think it was okay." She was being polite. She had thought it was easy. None of the questions had given her more than a moment's pause, and two of the longer problems had been taken directly from the book.

"I haven't graded them yet, but I think you did quite well," Ben said.

Rachel nodded and smiled – the only appropriate response – 'I know, I totally rocked it,' wasn't very polite. She gestured at the iPod-sound system in the corner and asked, "What do you think of the music?"

David – or one of David's roommates – had been pumping out some odd sort of European technopunk since she arrived.

Ben took a moment to listen to the music, and then said deferentially, "It has a nice, strong rhythm."

Rachel chuckled, "I don't really like it either. What sort of music do you like?"

Ben smiled with relief, and replied, "I don't know, folksy rock, pop rock, that sort of stuff. How about you?"

Rachel leaned in, and whispered in the air of one conveying state secrets, "I have a secret passion for the Dixie Chicks. You see, I grew up in Texas, and Goodbye Earl is one of my favorite songs. But don't you go spreading it around. I have a reputation to maintain."

Ben mimed locking his lips and throwing away the key, blue eyes sparkling, and Rachel laughed again at his adorkableness.

Ben told her a bit about growing up in Hicksville, Indiana and the one time he and Śānti were locked in the library after it closed, "… the punch-line of this all is, I could have gone out the fire exit, but I was afraid of triggering the firm alarm, and it wasn't even connected to the alarm system. Boy, was my dad mad. He still doesn't believe me that I spent the night at the _library_."

Rachel shared one story of when she was a little girl and took a dead bird home for her daddy to fix – Thárros running at her side in the form of a raccoon cub – and instead he freaked out at her about _Salmonella._ She finished her beer at the same time as her story, and excused herself to try to find something better than the PBR-swill she had been drinking. By the time she came back, Ben had moved on, and Rachel started chatting with David.

By the end of the night, she was five drinks in – a normal night for her and her high school buddies, but the months of clean living in college had drastically reduced her alcohol tolerance – and was making-out in a horrifyingly public manner with one of David's roommates with a _Blue Jay_ dæmon to whom Thárros had taken an irrational liking. She had gone home – alone – before things got too out of hand, but the damage had been done. Her reputation as an analytical and logical scientist was pretty much obliterated. Apparently being a sexual being was incompatible with being an intellectual being.

Even then, Rachel knew she was being oversensitive, but every time one of her classmates made a lewd joke about bonobo dæmons or alluded to Marie Curie and her affair, she knew they were referring to her. Oh to be seventeen again, when her biggest mistakes only affected herself and her unwarranted reputation of promiscuity, not the whole world, or _her_ whole world – her family and its survival.


	3. Of Books and Eyes

- Author's Note: Set before the events of Chapter 1

* * *

Rachel felt Corporal Strausser and Ronald's slimy eyes on her and Thárros. Most of the time Monroe left her alone, in her room, to her own devices, confident that the guards outside her doors and below her windows, and the promises of tracking her back to her family and eviscerating them in front of her were enough to keep her in her place. However, every now and then – with no perceivable pattern or trigger – he'd declare her "uppity" or "sly" and would either take her books away or sic Corporal Strausser on her. In one manner or another.

Today Strausser was merely watching, hence his revolting, nauseating, rancid eyes on her. Undressing her. Taking note of what she did and for how long. Fantasizing about interrogating her – or raping her, it was impossible to tell with that one.

Strausser and his male daemon were so shuddersome. Rachel intellectually knew that homoanimi were no more likely to be deranged, sociopathic, or gay than heteroanimi – or actually, Rachel _had_ read a study that found that they were, on average, 0.4 Kinsey units more homosexual that heteroanimi, not that that mattered – but still, Strausser and Ronald simply perspired sleaze and fit the stereotype of the depraved homoanimi to a tee.

Despite the perpetual goose prickles, Rachel continued on as per usual – mostly – she _did_ forego her usual post-breakfast sponge bath and instead went straight for her research, or what she called research.

Bass wasn't crazy or stupid enough to give her access to academic journals or to any physics or engineering texts, but he had practically emptied a high school reference library's worth of math, chemistry, biology, literature, and history books into her rooms.

The math texts were laughable. She had finished AP Calc. when she was 17 – tutoring a cute Kendo guy, whom Gene had disparagingly called a ninja, all the while. In college she had minored in math, taking Linear Algebra, Dif. Eq., Complex Variables, and Number Theory just for kicks.

The chemistry texts had been interesting. She had poured through them first. Even the sanitized-for-popular-consumption books had interesting little tidbits she squirreled away for Later – whenever that might be, and whatever that might entail. Tidbits about making mustard gas, napalm, and TNT. Tidbits for peacetime too, like how to make synthetic dyes and how to extract and purify natural drugs like aspirin and morphine.

Once she had even gone so far as to deface a book by ripping out a photo of Oppenheimer and Fernanda with his Bhagavad Gita quote and Rosalind Franklin and William with her X-ray diffraction pattern. Her crop and carrot. One she looked at when she needed to whip up more self-loathing to survive her internment – even though Thárros though it was a profoundly counter-productive move. The other – a girlhood hero of hers (along with Ada Lovelace, but there were no CS books to deface) – she only looked at in the depths of her despair to remind herself that the scientific search for knowledge was not inherently evil, only people were, and sometimes normal people were used by others for selfish or evil means.

Rachel had hidden the photos in the batting of her pillow. She had known Bass – or one of his minions – would find them, but once they did, they left them be, finding them innocuous enough. The photos were a sort of test, and she knew that any conceivable hiding spot would be searched during her weekly baths. She left all of her important notes in her head – or in heavy code, cryptography was a fun part of Number Theory.

She was currently leafing through a botany book – a book Bass had been foolish enough to let slip through. True much of the text talked about the differences between Angiosperms and Gymnosperms, and drupes, fruits, and berries, but it also detailed toxic plants and their LD50s. Some of these toxic plants were native to Pennsylvania.

Perhaps some day Bass would take her on one of his infrequent yet hideously unpleasant faux-outings and she would find _Actaea pachypoda,_ _Menispermum canadense, _or _Aconitum. _Then, during one of the much-despised dinners, she'd slip a little something something into his dish or drink – or into both of theirs.

Monroe had purged the militia twice since Miles and Irina's defection leaving only sycophants and creeps – or obsequious creeps – such as Captain Baker and Captain Neville as trusted advisors and highest ranking men. Without Monroe there would be a massive power struggle and she very well might be better off dead than in the hands of the victor. Or maybe she _could_ flee in the chaos. She _had_ kept one of Monroe's sordid little gifts – a powder blue négligée – to aid in a possible escape plan posing as lady of the night. A plan that _might _work during a massive power struggle, but would get very dangerous out on the likely lawless streets of Philadelphia.

This was only one escape plan among many deemed too dangerous or impracticable by Thárros. Too dangerous or impracticable for now, at least. What had happened with Miles – no, General Matheson – only reinforced her need to make plans nested within plans and to shuffle plans and priorities on the fly.

The literature and history books were reserved for her post-lunch 'leisure time' – not that they were lighter fare than the biology books, but Bass knew her as a high-minded scientist, so she had to fit the part – reading interesting dribs and drabs aloud for Thárros while storing dramatic plots of escape or historical battles of note in her brain.

After 'leisure time' was calisthenics – another scheduled event she skipped when Corporal Strausser was babysitting. One time of feeling his loathsome eyes track her breasts as they bounced for the lack of a good sports bra was more than enough for several lifetimes.

Traditionally, after dinner, she wrote in her diary, sometimes leaving heavily coded notes or reminders of important passages, sometimes she doodled, and sometimes she filled the pages with self-flagellating remorse and remonstrances over leaving Ben and the kids. She suppressed this guilt for days at a time, but let it bubble forth occasionally. Like how Charlie's Ulysses was about to settle, and she'd likely never see his final form. Never see her daughter's true soul. Never see the fine woman she'd grown up into.

She knew Monroe was reading her diary and wondered if her self-reproach and pain got his rocks off. She was concerned that she was only reinforcing his belief that she was, at her core, a hand-wringing mother, and giving him cracks to exploit. But she also knew that his world-view would have only accepted such an explanation. And she couldn't very well go divulging her _other_ mountain of guilt to her diary; it would totally destroy her ignorance-ploy. Even her photo of Oppenheimer was too close to the truth for comfort, but luckily Bass hadn't gotten it or at least never called her on it.

Rachel shook herself, and turned back to her botany book. She was reading about Datura and pointed out the illustrations of the pretty flowers to Thárros while taking mental notes about its hallucinogenic and toxic properties. As long as Strausser and Monroe thought she was reading the book out of boredom and feminine interest in pretty flowers, they'd never realize what a goldmine it was. Thárros murmured appreciatively and preened her hair, doing his part to keep up the ruse, and Rachel stroked his glossy and soft-feathered breast meditatively.


End file.
